Mission road - By Rick Riordan Page 0,61

Lucia Jr.’s cheek.

Something about the baby’s face still bothered her . . . some resemblance, but before she could give it more thought, Ralph’s sister came out of the bathroom, toweling her hair dry, bringing with her a cloud of jasmine-scented steam.

“Thanks a million,” she said. “I forgot how good that feels.”

Maia nodded. She picked up the baby in spite of her squirming protests and gave her a hug. She kissed her forehead.

“Cute, isn’t she?” Ralph’s sister said. “But hijo, tons of work. You got kids?”

“No,” Maia said. “No kids.”

“Still time.”

Maia said her goodbyes. She had another stop to make.

The paper Ralph had given her was still folded into her pocket—a police printout with her name, her address, Tres’ address. Everything one would need to give instructions to an assassin.

It was high time she paid the police another visit.

• • •

THE SAPD EVIDENCE ROOM, LIKE MOST that Maia had been in, was a cold basement, perpetually lit by corpse-colored fluorescents. A chain link wall separated the outside from rows of metal shelving, cardboard boxes, trunks and refrigerators.

A bored-looking supervisor sat behind a Dutch door, filling out paperwork. On the counter next to him was a logbook for signing in and out.

Maia had freshened up in the car while she was putting together her cover story. She couldn’t do much about the bandage on her cheek, but she’d fixed her makeup otherwise. She’d made sure she was wearing enough perfume.

She leaned against the Dutch door, a little closer to the supervisor than was necessary, and smiled. “Long night?”

She got the desired effect.

In his haste to stand up, the supervisor dropped his clipboard. “Oh, um, no.”

He was about thirty. Pale. Dark hair and chewed cuticles. Like most cops who gravitate to lonely jobs in the bowels of the department, he looked like a classroom pet that was used to being alternately ignored and terrorized.

Maia offered her hand. “My name’s Lee, from Austin. They tell you I was coming down?”

“Um, no, ma’am . . . I mean, I would’ve remembered if they mentioned somebody like you.”

His hand was cold and damp, but Maia gave it a nice firm shake—friendly, uninhibited. “It’s about the Orosco case. I hate to bother you, but I wanted to see the evidence. It is here, right?”

She handed him a slip of paper with a case number written on it. Finding a believable cold case to investigate, and the accompanying file information, had taken her all of five minutes—one phone call to an acquaintance in Austin.

The supervisor looked at the number. “Oh . . . oh, yeah. Been here for years. Yuck.”

“Would it be okay if I—” She gestured to his side of the door, gave him a smile that was just a bit playful. She was overdoing it. No female cop would flirt like this. But she was betting the supervisor wouldn’t object.

He didn’t.

“Just let me—um, here, sign in . . .”

He opened the gate while Maia scanned the logbook, saw the entries she wanted to see, then signed herself in as Minnie Mouse and put the incorrect date and time. The supervisor didn’t notice.

Once inside, he was more than happy—thrilled, he insisted—to walk her back to cold storage.

“Thanks, these places are such mazes,” Maia gushed gratefully. “I don’t know how you keep it all straight.”

“Oh, well, yeah . . .”

Maia figured it was time to make her point. She asked the supervisor if she could make a quick cell call.

“Oh, sure,” he said. “Don’t know if you’ll get a good signal in here.”

She got a signal. She was just calling upstairs.

“This is Maia Lee,” she said into the phone.

Momentary silence, then the man on the other end said: “We need to talk to you in person. Now.”

“I know,” Maia said. “I’m in the basement.”

“What do you mean you’re in the basement?”

“See you soon.”

She hung up, gave the evidence supervisor a conspiratorial smile. “Bosses. Such a pain. Please, lead on.”

The piece of evidence she pretended to want was a human pelvis from a stabbing murder back in 1998. The victim and the prime suspect had both been from Austin, so SAPD and APD had cooperated on the case. The weapon had never been found. The pelvis, with penetration wound, had been kept in cold storage—just in case they ever found a blade to match it against.

It boggled Maia’s mind that anyone would keep such a thing, rather than just making a cast of the wound, but her contact had assured her it wasn’t the strangest thing in the